


Ave Maria

by xeboot



Category: Bloodborne (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-05
Updated: 2019-04-05
Packaged: 2020-01-05 01:54:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18356201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xeboot/pseuds/xeboot
Summary: After her defeat within The Hunter’s Nightmare, Maria awakens in place that she finds strangely familiar. She also finds herself conversing with something that is so disconcertingly similar to herself.





	Ave Maria

**Author's Note:**

> I started this fic right after finishing the DLC. Word says the document was created December 7th, 2015. I just finished the story today, April 4th, 2019. So...yeah, yeaaaah. It's undergone way too many revisions and edits and no, I'm still not happy with it but at least it's readable and if I look at this any more I'm going to barf. This is the most ambitious and thematically dense thing I've ever written. The most cursed >4k words ever. And to think this started as a joke off of Maria-sama ga Miteru before it deteriorated into whatever the hell this is and that's before I got the brilliant, brilliant idea to weave Schubert into this. I almost want to title this "How Passing Strange," but since the lyrics are embedded into dialogue, "Ave Maria" works fine. There's a lot I can say about this but honestly, I rather just let it be. If it can't speak for itself than it doesn't deserve to live.

When Maria stirs, she feels a fire burning from inside her throat. She coughs. Stagnant air is compressed and then expunged from her lungs. Blood seeps up before it falls from her lips. It streams down to her cheeks. She finds that she is laying on her back. Dirt is beneath her feet. Her cravat then dampens with something wet. It’s her blood, one that blisters and scalds with the heat of a life she barely remembers. She is amongst the living now, perhaps. Unlike life, she knows that death is cold, and the wispy universe of dreams and nightmares flows with all the false serenity and depths of still waters. She has experienced all three of these states, yet she is still displaced. She knows not where she is.

"You should rest," a disarmingly familiar voice soothes. Porcelain fingers gently tuck Maria’s bangs behind her ears. "You can now rest."

She almost does as she is so very tired. Maria’s eyelids feel heavy as if she has both slept too long but also stayed awake for far too long. What stops her from falling back into slumber is the voice she hears. Something about it causes the hair on the back of her neck to prickle. It is much too familiar.

When the dust falls from her now open eyes, she sees herself. But it is also not herself that’s peering down at Maria like a distorted reflection of a flower. One that is reaching out towards Narcissus through a rippling pool. Though they look alike, they are more than just their image. Maria senses the fundamental difference in their origin: this thing before her is not, and was never, human.

But oh, how similar they are!

Their skin shares the same pale Cainhurst hue and their features are cut with the same aristocratic sharpness that differentiates the Queen's kin from all others. Though they are still in their maiden years, their hair is silvery-gray. Her reflection seems to appraise her with the same matronly thoughtfulness Maria carried into the final days of her life. It is the same mild expression she viewed her patients with as she held their hands and stroked their distorted, fluid-engorged faces. She had watched how they reached out, cried out, and swayed to the sea. She had watched how they babbled all sorts of nonsensical truths as she, ever the fox in the henhouse, guided them closer-and-closer to the secrets of the universe.

If she strains her ears, she can hear how those secrets chime ever-so-sweetly. As they always have, their sound drowns out her patients’ cries. Even though she cast away her beloved Rakuyo, it did not stop her from pursuing a different prey. Maria had discovered far too late in life that a hunter is still a hunter without her blades.

“Where am I?” she asks as she turns her gaze, unable to bear the sight of her reflection peering down at her. She finds that her head is being cradled on the other’s lap. Warmth radiates from the skirt against her cheeks. The fabric feels as if it had been basking close to a campfire. Maria has never seen such clothes before but they evoke nostalgia in her. They remind her of someone, someone who was once important to her.

“Where are you not?” her uncanny double responds as she removes Maria’s tricorne hat and sets it aside with care. “One can be in many places if one so chooses. Or is chosen.”

“Perhaps,” Maria says as she feels her ponytail being undone. “I dreamt—I was in a nightmare. And now,” she sees the cobbled steps, the unkempt garden from where she lay, “This is the workshop. I have not been here for quite some time. Were there always these many graves?” Her bleary eyes look to the gravestone nearest to her and attempt to focus on it. “Is that not my own?”

Memories slowly drip into Maria’s mind like tiny water droplets. Each one triggers a ripple of recollection: she remembers sparring on these steps; she remembers the countless hours spent sharpening and modifying her weapons inside the workshop; she remembers napping with her back against the outer stone walls. In fact, this hill where she now lays was once one of her favorite spots to sleep for it was at the highest vantage point in the area: from here Maria could look out and into the spiraling topography of Yharham as she drifted off into slumber. Yet the familiarity of this place is now offset by a prevailing sense of unease. Maria knows this is not the old workshop: the dense fog that surrounds this place is clearly supernatural in origin and the moon that hangs overhead is far, far too large to be normal. She also knows not what to make of the thin pillars out in the distance. As for this gravestone that bears her name—it is a symbolic gesture, an empty grave. After all, wasn’t her body elsewhere? She vaguely remembers a coffin from her nightmares. So why is she now here?

As soon as the question occurs to her, her reflection answers:

“You have spent a long time watching over us, Lady Maria. Without your guidance, we would not be here.”

“You know my name.”

“Of course. I was made in your own image in accordance to your likeness. And I have been here ever since then watching every which thing that creeps after its kind,” her reflection says as she brushes her thumb across Maria’s lips and cheeks. She wipes away the traces of blood with reverent care. “If you will not rest than I have so many questions I wish to ask of you, now that you are here.”

Though Maria's instincts are still drowsy, and her body is still heavy and unresponsive, her self-preservation stirs into muted alarm. She knows something is not quite right; something about her existence is not quite right, never mind the inexplicable sight before her very eyes of someone—something—that was both her and not herself. After all, why would she want to know more about herself? Something like that isn’t possible—this thing before her can’t be Maria. There is only one of her; there should only be one of her.

Maria sits up with a shudder, a cry, and would have collapsed if not for her false copy's supportive arms. Maria's shaky hands clutch the intricate, yet roughly woven shawl worn by the other. As her hair is unbound, it brushes up against the side of her face.

"Who made you? What are you?" she asks as she is held close and still. The body against her feels both cold and warm. Cool porcelain is clothed in heated wool, and she can feel a heartbeat that is synced with her own. Their lungs take a breath at the exact same second and, moments after, exhale together. Maria notices this as she observes the handiwork of the shawl the other wears. Though her attire is plain compared to Cainhurst finery, the delicate lace sewn over the thick fabric is painstakingly precise; there is not a stitch missing or sewn out of order. Yet it is rough like the creator was not used to the material, but still took enormous care to perfect. Who knows how many drafts it took him to complete the final product?

Him. Gehrman.

Realization dawns in Maria's eyes; she breaks free of the other’s embrace. Her cravat suddenly feels too constricting; she cannot breathe. She pulls it from her neck and throws it to the ground. She retches and only more blood is expunged from her lips. She clutches her neck and she finds that, although her wounds have disappeared, blood is still wet on her gloves.

"Where is he?" she demands once she has regained her breath. “Where is your Maker?”

"You're as inquisitive as the stories say and just as perceptive," her copy replies, her tone laced with admiration and good humor. She appraises Maria with an unmovable expression. Maria notices then that the other's lips do not move when she speaks, but she hears it all the same with her ears. "Gehrman still slumbers. You will not be able to wake him. As for my Maker, is she not in front of me? Others may have given me form, but without you I would not have been created. I do originate from you, after all.”

Maria watches mutely as one of her hands is grasped and the buckles on her leather gloves gently undone. The tenderness of the act gives her pause though it does nothing to quell the revulsion that quakes within her. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees that her discarded cravat is floating in a pool of opaque white liquid. Tiny hands spring forth from the liquid and take hold of the cloth. She watches in awe as her blood is absorbed into the white liquid. It leaves her once blood-stained fabric pristine before the little grotesque beings pull it into the earth and disappear. No trace is left behind. Her hat is also nowhere to be found; something similar must have also happened to it. She is about to comment on the spectacle, but the contact against her now bare hands causes her to gasp.

“You feel it too,” the false copy says, interlacing their fingers together, "this connection, do you not? I may only be a doll but I wonder, Lady Maria, is this not a familial bond?”

Maria had experienced many horrific things—done many horrific things—over the course of her life. She had been a knight of Cainhurst and one of the first Yharnam hunters. She had slaughtered scores of humans and beasts alike with her own hands and had seen and seen to the abominations that spewed from humanity’s twisted form. Yet she is rendered powerless to the fear that creeps through her wrists and spreads to the base of her spine, one which causes her to shudder in abject horror at the contact. Though both her hands are intertwined with her counterpart’s, she feels as if she’s clasping her own. The two-fold feeling makes her already weakened state even more dizzying and disorienting. She feels like she’s being drawn into her reflection; through their shared touch their existence comingles, winding and weaving together into a perpetuity—into a future she can almost see.

Maria stares at their intertwined fingers—at their intertwined existences. Her sense of self-preservation continues to ring in her ears. It tells her to run, to fight back, yet Maria knows not from what. Surely it could not be this doll. Since she has awoken, she has not felt a single malicious intent from the other. Though her hands are pristine and the doll's are sullied with Maria's blood, Maria knows the opposite to be true: it is her hands that has seen the death of hundreds. The thing before her has no killing intent, no desire for harm. If struck, Maria doubts that the doll would fight back.

Perhaps that is it, Maria thinks. This thing was made to be her, but it is only a pale imitation, a gross parody, a fanatic’s false idol set on an idyllic pedestal. It is a shell that houses an insubstantial spirit, something that is incomplete in form. It reminds her of the many humans she has killed: those who had been lost to the blood and madness of incomprehensible beings; those who had been lost somewhere in the hazy in-between of humanity and inhumanity. But this being is also different from those pathetic monsters: there is deliberation and intelligence in its creation. The doll has been shaped with intent and Maria finds herself disconcerted by the eeriness of their imperfect symmetry, of this thing that is both like her and unlike her in so many ways.

“You see all the cracks in me,” the doll observes. “I have often prayed in hopes for your aid so that I may guide just as you have guided and soothe just as you have soothed. But the respite I provide is not enough, and though I may embolden sickly spirits, I cannot cleanse the sickness of their taint. Tell me, what should I do, Lady Maria? How can I fulfill my purpose?”

“Your purpose?” Maria repeats. The earnestness of the request gives her pause before she smiles wryly. Perhaps we are not so different, she thinks, if the doll is asking her the same question she asked herself every day in her waning years. “I searched for that answer my entire life. What I found was that the closer I seemed to be to that answer, the farther I had strayed."

Though the years and her training had seen to the hardening of her body as well as her visage—all at once Maria is overtaken by bitterness. She now remembers. Her throat burns with the poison of regret and it only continues spreads insidiously through the rest of her body.

“And what was your purpose?”

“To protect,” she spits as if the word was bile, one made toxic by her failure and disillusionment. She had grown up on the stories of gallant knights, and how their bravery saved their kingdoms and brought prosperity to their lands. She had been instilled with purpose and took pride as she rose through the order of the Cainhurst knights and—oh!—how proudly had she taken her part when aiding the Byrgenwerth scholars in their underground explorations, fighting all the strange and wondrous things that lurked in those chalice depths! She had learned, she had refined her skills with Gehrman, her mentor, and with him they created and perfected techniques to hunt beasts under the cover of night. Her idyllic days, however, began to slip away from her when she realized that the answers they found only served to yield even more questions.

After all, in their pursuit of understanding the gods and godhood, it was only natural that she should start questioning what gave her—who gave her—purpose. Did she choose it? Was it chosen for her? And what did it all matter when they were tearing into the bodies of those blessed by the gods, searching for things that did not belong? What did it matter when they were tearing into the bodies of the gods, searching for things to belong? And what was she really protecting humanity from, the gods or themselves? These questions plagued Maria when she came to the realization that, in her time with the Bygrenwerth scholars, she had inadvertently made the transition from knight protector to hunter scholar.

She had realized too late that to protect and to advance were two very different things.

“In the end, I couldn’t protect anyone,” Maria admits. “Not even myself.”

A hand clasps her cheek. Maria opens her eyes and sees her uncanny self staring unblinkingly at her, appraising Maria with an unreadable expression. “That is not true. Not at all,” the doll replies whisper-soft. “Canst you hear them, Lady Maria?"

"Hear what?"

"The prayers. They still call out to you. Cry out to you. You are revered and admired by many more than you know. Far more than you could imagine.” The doll tilts her head and says, “I have heard many stories and even more whispered from the wild. They say that your gods are sympathetic in spirit and they will answer when called. However," the doll says, laughter apparent in her voice, "I have not heard many stories of humans who are sympathetic to the gods. Besides you, of course.”

“What do you mean?”

“The little emissaries have sung only in praise of your name and those songs have reached the ears of the divine. They grew curious of your existence and your work, Lady Maria. When you were lost to the nightmares, one god in particular granted the wish of the human who sought after you, in part to sate its own wild curiosity. And so, I exist. All I wish is to continue what you started, to protect those who need protection. I too wish to be the beacon of light for those fighting on these troubled shores of life.”

The words that are spoken by her strange reflection, the cadence of hope and desire, do not reach Maria’s ears. With her wits recovering along with her memories, Maria now remembers the cause of her death. She remembers the voices of her patients and the nonsensical words they say as they twist their forms and wring their bodies in their attempt to reach the sun and the sky. She remembers how their heads became engorged with the knowledge and the promise of the sea. She thinks then to the cries that she silenced at the little fishing hamlet, and how the crashing waves were never quite loud enough to drown out the curses muttered under the dying's breath. Her ears buzz with sound of droning madness.

Everything she has done, everything she fought for whether it be for glory, knowledge, self-protection, or the care of others—Maria no longer can discern the reasoning behind her actions: the greater purpose behind them. What was all her effort for? What cause did she stand for? Maria has been part of so many battles and so many different factions. Cainhurst, Byrgenwerth, Yharham, the Healing Church—what did any of them matter? None of them were right—nothing was right. How could the truth that everyone pursued be so gruesome? All she wanted was to protect humanity, to heal the weak and the dying. Yet the knowledge they uncovered and used to heal only seemed to begat more questions. And not only that, Maria began to question what it meant to protect. Was she to protect humanity as it once was or see to its end as its remnants ascended to another form of existence? And how could she protect humanity from itself?

Or maybe it was simply the nature of humanity to tear itself apart in its pursuit of advancement. To protect and to advance were, after all, two very different things. And if this was the case, what was she to do?

From her place in the Astra Clocktower, overlooking all of Yharnam, Maria had seen how the world warped and crackled around her, and how the secrets they brought to daylight revealed the shallow boundaries between dreams and reality. And the more she watched, the longer she stared, she only saw more horrors upon the horizon. She no longer wanted to see, she no longer wanted to hear.

And so, to answer the doll’s question, what does Maria now hear?

“I hear nothing,” she lies. She turns her back and closes her eyes. Her mind swirls with the anguish and regrets she could not escape in life or in her nightmares. And now, it haunts her even in her death. She wants nothing to do with this twisted reality that is clawing itself apart. Corpses, she decided long ago, should be left well alone. How unfortunate is it that she appears to be the only one who bears this sentiment.

“So what do you wish for, Lady Maria?” her reflection asks.

“I no longer know,” Maria admits. If she knew she would still possess the desire to live. The only thing she yearns for now is silence.

“I see,” the doll says as she reaches down to caress the surface of Maria’s brooch, running her fingers around the smooth edges. “Perhaps that is it,” the doll ponders to herself before she unclasps the brooch and frees Maria’s shoulders from her mantle. “I think I understand now why I am here and why I bear your image. Oh, what a wonderful web we spin of gods who created men who created dolls. We each look to our creations to carry on what we cannot.”

When the weight is lifted from Maria's shoulders and she looks to the doll once more, she finds something has changed about her counterpart. Though there is no alteration to the doll's porcelain complexion, there is nevertheless something inexplicably solid about her now, something fuller. As for her, the strength she had begun to regain seems to seep away. Maria's attention shifts when a pool of white blood surrounds her feet and the little white monsters who seize her boots and separate her from them. She gasps.

“Do not fear, Lady Maria," the doll hushes as she brushes her hand against Maria’s cheeks. "Your noble soul will soon be able to rest. Your work here is done. Though you do not know, it was you who saved many who were in despair. You gave them shelter and brought them refuge."

The more Maria stares at the doll, the more she feels like she is staring down at herself. The hand that is caressing her cheek feels more like her hand than her own. And through their shared touch the grief Maria once felt departs as she finds herself laid gently bare.

Her doll seems to almost be smiling as she arranges Maria to rest comfortably against her gravestone. Her almost smile matches the one now on Maria’s face. A pool of white blood now surrounds her entire body and she no longer has the strength or desire to struggle.

"No longer shall you worry,” the doll assures. “You will sleep safe beneath my care. Though Gehrman cannot hear you and has come to revile me, I am happy that you heard my prayer just as I have heard yours. Just as you have seen to the beginning, I will see it to the end. I will finish what you have begun. After all, are we all not one and the same?”

Maria feels her body sinking. She finds herself is being pulled into that pool of white. Those tiny monsters crawl up her body and claim her as their own. Then the drowning whiteness that consumes her fades into all-encompassing black. And as she falls into a dreamless slumber, Maria thinks to herself that perhaps what she had been missing wasn’t purpose, but vision.

And when the Doll of Maria stirs, she wakes to the sight of her good hunter and with a question on her lips, of something that is both substantial and unsubstantial.

"Good Hunter,” she asks, “This may sound strange, but have I somehow changed? Moments ago, from some place, perhaps deep within, I sensed liberation from heavy shackles. Not that I would know. How passing strange.”


End file.
